


Her Father's Daughter

by devilinthedetails



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Brother and Sister - Freeform, Death, Drama, Family, Family Drama, Father and daughter, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief, Justice, Loss, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29228238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Leia is her father's daughter.
Kudos: 11





	Her Father's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the end of ROTJ with a flashback to the Rogue One era.

Her Father’s Daughter

“Leia.” Luke stood in the Bright Tree Village hut with its walls carved from Endorian redwood and its roof of woven savanna grass that Leia had been assigned, his face streaked with the sunset shadows of twilight. Soon, after night fell over the Endorian forest with its towering life and sanctuary trees, there would be a celebration complete with singing and bonfires of the Empire’s defeat. “Our father turned back to the light at the end. He regretted and repented the evil he committed as a servant of the Empire and the Dark Side. He killed the Emperor to save me and redeemed himself, restoring himself to the Light Side of the Force before he died.”

This was too rooted in a Force and a spirituality Leia didn’t understand and didn’t believe in no matter how ardently Luke did for her to do anything other than scoff, “So he finally decided to stop doing evil and do one good thing, and that is supposed to atone for all the evil he did for decades in the galaxy?”

“No, of course not.” Sky blue eyes earnest, Luke reached out to clasp her hand, and she twisted away before he could touch her. She couldn’t bear to be touched by him right now, not when she felt a fury mounting hot inside her. “It only ended the horror, and isn’t that what we were fighting for? An end to the horror?”

“An end to the horror?” Leia stared at her brother, unable to believe the words that were emerging from his mouth. “Alderaan is destroyed. Billions are dead and can never be brought back to life. That’s a horror I see and hear so many nights before I slip into a restless sleep. It’s a horror that won’t ever stop or end. A horror Vader never could atone for unless he could bring all those dead back to life.”

“He couldn’t.” Luke bit his lip. “The Force doesn’t work that way, Leia.”

“I thought not.” Leia’s nostrils flared. “And you think I should forgive him because he was sorry and did one good thing before he died. As if that could make up for torturing me or holding me back, forcing me to watch helplessly, while my planet was destroyed by the Death Star? Am I supposed to just forget that and forgive him when he never even apologized to me?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to forget anything.” Luke shook his head. “Forgiveness is different than forgetting.”

“Forgiveness is the ultimate forgetting. The complete erasing of a wrong committed.” Leia’s lips pursed. “It’s not my place to forgive and erase the destruction of Alderaan. It is my place only to honor the dead.”

“Do you think the dead want to be honored by your hatred? Your bitterness and resentment?” Luke’s words felt like a slap across the face. “Wouldn’t they prefer to be honored by your peace?”

“Who knows what they would prefer,” snapped Leia. “They’re dead and nobody can ever ask them what they’d prefer again thanks to your father.”

“Our father, Leia. His blood runs through your veins as much as mine.” The emphasis Luke laid on the “our” felt like another smack in the face.

Our father. Not just Luke’s but hers as well. A truth written in blood that she wasn’t supposed to be able to deny, but family wasn’t defined and created by blood alone, was it? It was also defined and created by love. The love she had felt streaming through her toward her adoptive parents—her real parents—and that she had felt flowing back to her as light reflected in a mirror from them. The love she felt for Luke even when his naivety irked her, and the love she knew he felt for her even when her words became abrasive as acid.

“He’s not my father.” Leia’s fists clenched, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms. “My father was and always will be the man who raised me and took pride in me. Encouraged me and celebrated all my accomplishments from the time I could talk. The moment I could crawl and walk. Bail Organa of Alderaan.”

As if the sentence were a trigger for memory, she was back bathing in the humid soup that was the air around the Great Temple that served as the Rebel Base on Yavin IV, back on the landing pad of the base of Yavin IV. Jungle sounds, the chirping of birds whose wings were a rainbow of colors and bugs whose beauty belied the poison inside them, echoed in her ears. The noises of nature mingled in a strange symphony with those that provided proof of technological advancement as ships prepared for takeoff and she said goodbye to her father for what both of them feared could be the last time and fervently hoped wouldn’t be.

The final farewell could come at any moment when resisting the Empire. Even back then, just starting to serve the Rebel Alliance in secret, Leia understood that. Or thought she understood that. She certainly understood it all the more keenly and painfully now than she had then. When a glow of innocence still shone about her, pure and radiant as her favored, spotless white dresses.

“I need you to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi,” her father told her, resting gentle hands on her shoulders. “He was a Jedi and general during the Clone Wars now hiding from the Empire on Tatooine. You must persuade him to come out of hiding. His assistance at this juncture will be critical to the survival of the Alliance—of the hope of freedom in this galaxy.”

“How will I persuade him to come out of hiding?” Leia hoped she sounded calm and confident, not like a nervous wreck on the cusp of total collapse.

“You are your father’s daughter. That’ll be enough.” One of her father’s hands left her shoulder to cup her cheek. “Your father and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought the Separatists together during the Clone Wars. They were best friends. So close they were almost brothers. They saved each others’ lives more times than either of them could count, and together, they were an almost unbeatable force for good.”

They must have gotten beaten, Leia thought. Otherwise, the Empire wouldn’t have risen in the galaxy.

As if he could read her thoughts through the expression on her face, her father said, “They fought to keep back the dark at bay, but eventually the dark swallowed your father and forced Obi-Wan Kenobi into exile.” There was an almost wistful gaze in her father’s eyes, as he finished, “Skywalker and Kenobi. They made an epic duo that should’ve been remembered through the ages instead of instead of forgotten history and forbidden lore under the rule of the Empire. Anakin Skywalker, that was your father’s name, and, through all these intervening years, Obi-Wan Kenobi will still do anything he can for Anakin Skywalker—or Anakin Skywalker’s offspring.”

“My father isn’t Anakin Skywalker.” Leia shook her head, her chin lifting. She had always wanted to know the name of her biological father, but when it was given to her she found it was meaningless—an identity she could reject instantly. A label that she had no desire to attach to herself when she could be Bail Organa’s daughter instead. “You’re my father as much as if we were bound by blood and birth. I love you more than I ever could this unknown Anakin Skywalker.”

“I love you too, my dear.” Her father leaned forward to kiss her forehead, pride for the young woman she was growing into shimmering in the Yavin IV sunlight. “And I consider you as much my daughter as if you had been born to me and had my blood in your veins.”

Leia wrapped her arms around her father, taking a warm comfort in the music of their hearts beating as one for a moment, before her father’s head tilted to whisper in her ear, “Make sure you remind Obi-Wan Kenobi that he served with your father during the Clone Wars, however. That’ll be important to drawing him from his exile.”

“I will.” Leia nodded her understanding and lingered in her father’s arms for one last moment before climbing aboard her ship and embarking on her mission to make contact with Obi-Wan Kenobi. A mission that quickly morphed into accepting the Death Star plans and ensuring that they were smuggled to safety…

She returned to the present moment with a jolt, realizing Luke was gazing at her as if she had been the one to slap him in the face—to reject him—with her words.

She was her father’s daughter, she told herself. Bail Organa’s daughter, and Bail Organa had always promoted peace and compromise—had always been courteous in even the most heated arguments and graceful in even the most awkward situations.

Determined to follow his example, Leia said more gently, reaching out to take and squeeze her brother’s hand at last, “I may not think of Vader as my father, Luke, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of you as my brother.”

“Will you forgive him for my sake?” Luke asked, squeezing her hand back.

“No.” Leia couldn’t forgive Vader. Not even for love of Luke. “Please don’t ask me to do that. I respect your choice to forgive Vader and won’t question it, but you need to respect my decision not to forgive Vader and not question it in return.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Luke bowed his head. “I do plan to burn his body tonight if you wish to join me for the cremation.”

“I can’t join you for that.” Leia’s tone wavered, and tears stung her eyes suddenly. She didn’t know who the tears were for. For herself. For Luke. For the people who had died in a single beam of light when Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. For the billions upon billions of victims of the Empire’s tyranny and violence. For Vader. For the Anakin Skywalker she had never met but whom her father had made sound like a tragic, fallen hero instead of a monster—a villain out of a child’s storybook or morality fable. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Luke gave her a small, sad smile. “This is supposed to be a night of celebration for you. I don’t want to mar it.”

Luke left her in peace then. Only she didn’t feel at peace. She felt torn. Torn between two fathers. One who had loved her and one who had tortured her. One who had been gentle and one who had been a tyrant. One she had sought to emulate and one she had resisted at every opportunity. One who was her greatest hero and the other her most hated enemy. One who had nurtured her since she was small and one who had shared her blood. One she wanted to be like and one she never wanted to be like.

A civil war, every bit as painful as the one between the Empire and the Rebels, waged inside her as she wondered whether it was possible to have two fathers, and to ever be at peace with herself or with them when those two contradictory identities dueled for dominance within her.

She wondered if it was the same for Luke, or if it was different because his stern uncle had never been a father to him. Perhaps that was why Vader could come to feel like the father he had been searching for all his life, while to Leia Vader still felt like the terrible embodiment of evil.

Later that night, when the embers of Vader’s funeral pyre had burned to ash and Luke stood alone, staring into the forest at invisible figures only he could see, Leia crossed a crunching bed of leaves and conifer needles to fold her brother in an embrace.

“His name was Anakin Skywalker,” she murmured, wondering how soon her words would be swallowed in the wind and music. “My father made him sound like a hero, but I never knew him as such.”

She almost wished she had known him as Anakin Skywalker and a hero. Then she might not feel so divided within herself right now. Maybe then she would be at peace and centered within herself. As calm inside as her brother appeared on the surface.

“I think I did.” Luke’s head leaned against her shoulder. “At the end.”


End file.
